let go is not easy!
I am not happy for the current circumstance due to I have strong desire to stay in somewhere.
However, they give me somewhere else.
I feel deeply sorrow about the fact which I cannot control.
But you can do nothing about things you cannot control, right? and you still don’t know what the universe prepare for you.
Have trust and faith in the universe, okay?!
Tonight I’m quite interested in thinking about luck:) Here is another interesting post for luck haha. I will on call 36 tmr and pls bless me white call ❤
By Galadriel Watson
Sometimes, everything seems to go wrong. You’re passed over for a job. Your back aches. Your zipper breaks. Your cat keeps throwing up. Faced with setbacks large and small, you feel like your life is always taking a turn for the worse. You aren’t superstitious, but you begin to wonder — could you just be an unlucky person? Why does it seem like you can never catch a break?
I myself have been feeling this way lately. In hopes of improving my outlook, I turned to three experts who helped me understand why we believe in luck and how we can harness that belief to make real changes in our attitude toward life that may help us feel less “unlucky.”
People define luck in three ways, according to Jacqueline Woolley, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. First, we often use the term luck as synonymous with “chance”; we may call it lucky to win at a slot machine, although it’s actually a random event. Another way to frame luck is “as a supernatural force that exists in the universe,” she said. This force may touch on different people at different times, and some people believe (or hope) it also can be harnessed, with a ritual or charm. Third, it can be thought of as a personal trait: “It’s just something that you’re born with.”
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But does it exist? Richard Wiseman, author of “The Luck Factor” and professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, doesn’t believe there’s anything magical or superstitious about luck — it won’t help you out or hurt you at the casino. On the other hand, considering yourself lucky or unlucky is “a way of seeing yourself which then has impact on how you behave and how you think and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, in a sense, it absolutely does exist.”
And it has “existed” for ages. “Pretty much, in every culture throughout recorded history, people talk about superstitious rituals or chance — as indeed we do now, even with our amount of science and technology,” Wiseman said. “It’s something deep within us that realizes our lives are ruled by chance, and we’re trying to do something to get control over that.”
Woolley agrees. “We as humans are very uncomfortable with uncertainty,” she said. “When people feel less in control of their lives — like when they feel that things are random and they’re not directing their lives — then people often search for supernatural explanations.”
Vik Loveday conducted a small study of United Kingdom academic employees that illustrates that point. Between 2014 and 2015, the senior lecturer of sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, interviewed 44 academic employees who were on temporary contracts, a precarious employment situation that caused anxiety and financial instability and an overwhelming sense of lack of control.
In general, when one of these academics learned about good news concerning their careers, such as getting a permanent job or having a grant accepted, they would attribute it to luck. Because they felt they had so little control, a move in a positive direction had to have happened almost by accident, rather than as the result of hard work.
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Of course, academics aren’t the only people who attribute events to luck. Through his years of research, Wiseman has found that, in the United Kingdom, “You get roughly 12 percent of the population saying they’re extremely lucky and about 8 percent saying they’re unlucky.”
In a 2021 study and ongoing research, Woolley has looked at this idea in children. Between about ages 4 and 8, they are exposed to the concept of luck through sources like family, school, books and the Internet. By age 10, however, they start to get skeptical. They’ve begun to notice that, “when they wish for something, it doesn’t happen,” Woolley said. “They’re starting to realize that, if a kid forgets her lucky charm and loses a race, it’s not because this supernatural force was missing in her life that day — it was because she forgot her lucky object and that made her stressed and anxious, and that’s why she lost the race.”
Still, this doesn’t stop the belief from persisting into adulthood — and even our reliance on charms and rituals. For example, former president Barack Obama would play basketball to improve his electoral chances. Basketball player Michael Jordan had to wear his college practice shorts under his NBA uniform.
Woolley notes a 2010 study — which she wasn’t involved in and which other researchers haven’t been able to replicate — that found that being told a golf ball was lucky improved participants’ chances of making the putt. “Obviously it’s not luck that’s causing this. It’s that these superstitious rituals give you confidence and then you do better,” Woolley said. “If you think it’s going to make you play better, then chances are you’re going to play better.”
Is it possible to change your outlook on luck, and, if so, could that lead to better outcomes?
The first thing to understand is that a person’s position in society contributes to their concept of luck. “The circumstances you’re born into, the society you’re born into, the genetic makeup you’re handed — all these things are outside of your control,” Wiseman said.
Aside from these constraints, however, he believes there are steps you can take to improve your luck. After studying people who consider themselves lucky or unlucky, he has found that the “lucky” ones maximize chance opportunities and dare to follow their intuition to grasp those moments.
“If you are relaxed and happy, your world view becomes bigger and you see more opportunities,” he said. “If you’re a flexible person, when those opportunities come in, you’ll make the most of them. Lucky people know where they’re heading, but often they change the course depending on how the wind is going.”
Lucky people also expect good fortune and turn lousy experiences to good. “They tend to be — surprise surprise — optimists, and they’re also very resilient to bad things that happen,” Wiseman said. “If bad things happen, it’s thinking, ‘Okay, it could have been worse,’ rather than ‘It could have been better.’ ”
This may affect your future luck, Woolley explained. “If you feel better about an event, then maybe you’ll have better expectations about future events and maybe your luck, quote unquote, will change.”
As for specific activities, you can shift your focus toward the positive by keeping a “luck diary,” Wiseman said. “Each night before you go to bed, you spend about 30 seconds writing down a positive thing that’s happened that day, or a sense of gratitude for friends or family or health, or a negative thing that’s no longer happening.”
You also need to take the long view; breaking your leg could be considered a setback now, but if you meet your future spouse in the hospital, it could end up being a very fortuitous one.
Plus, don’t be a creature of habit. Take a different route when walking, watch a different TV program, speak to different people — even small changes can be effective. And then keep your eyes open and be prepared to snatch whatever opportunities might arise.
People who are “lucky” have “a broader focus and they’re more likely to encounter chance opportunities and then good things can happen,” Woolley said. “People who think of themselves as unlucky are just really sort of stuck in their narrow focus.”
What you can’t expect is for good fortune to magically come your way without effort. “Luck is a very big part of our self-identity,” Wiseman said, “and isn’t very malleable until you do something quite concrete about it.”
Would you rather be smart, hard-working, or lucky? Science provides the answer.
Not just in America, but throughout the world, there’s a tendency to believe that success is significantly correlated with merit. This is why when we look at someone who is wealthy, famous, or seems happy, there is a non-trivial probability that we assign certain positive qualities to them, such as talent or effort.
By talent, we mean exceptional skills, abilities, or expertise – even if they are partly developed through effort. By effort, we mean persistence, focus, and hard-work – even if, like talent, some people have a much stronger predisposition for these behaviors than others, and from an early age. This is why it is hard to think of a person who may have been rather lazy until their 30s, but became extremely driven and hard-working in the later part of their life (or vice-versa: super driven people who suddenly become laid-back, passive, and ambition-free).
At the same time, we are sometimes suspicious of the role that talent and effort may have played as catalysts of others’ success, which is when we resort to luck, as a competing explanation. Indeed, Daniel Kahneman, who pioneered the study of behavioral economics, famously noted that:
Success = talent + luck
Great success = a little more talent + a lot of luck
Now, we all know people who, perhaps in their attempt to come across as modest or fake humility, explain even the most impressive career accomplishments through statements like “I was lucky to be offered a scholarship for Harvard”, or “fortunate to win the Pulitzer”, but such confessions should be interpreted as charitable self-deprecation attempts, rather than genuine imposter syndrome.
But, what do we mean by luck? Whatever is left when you subtract talent and effort from achievement: anomalies, exceptions to the rule, and the serendipitous, arbitrary, and random nature of life.
Crucially, luck cannot be consistent or predictable: if you are lucky (or unlucky) all the time, there’s surely something in you that explains your success (or failures). As Tana French notes in The Witch Elm: “I used to believe that luck was a thing outside me, a thing that governed only what did and didn’t happen to me…. Now I think I was wrong. I think my luck was built into me, the keystone that cohered my bones, the golden thread that stitched together the secret tapestries of my DNA”.
Although there is (still) insufficient evidence to link relevant human accomplishments to their personal genetic complexion, it is rather obvious that factors not associated with either talent or effort make some people “luckier” than others: privilege, where you are born, who you are born to, etc. These universal drivers of success are not the result of people’s merit, in the sense that they are not caused by their own talent or effort, but the lottery of life. Gender, race, nationality, and socioeconomic status at birth all amplify or handicap people’s potential, and for reasons unrelated to their own skills, decisions, or motivation. The more privileged you are, the less talent and effort you will need to attain high levels of success, and vice-versa. For example, being born in Singapore, Canada, or Denmark is generally advantageous to being born in Afghanistan, the C.A.R., or Haiti.
Clearly, then, talent, effort and luck all play an important role in determining people’s career success – but which matters more? While this may seem an abstract or vague question, scientific research (here’s one of the best single studies) has produced a vast body of evidence to assess the relative impact of these three factors on people’s careers, achievements, and status. Here is a summary of these findings:
Talent: The most generalizable indicator of talent is human intelligence, which refers to a person’s learning and reasoning ability. Thousands of studies have tested whether intelligence tests predict different aspects of career success, such as academic performance, job performance, socio-economic status attainment, and entrepreneurial success. Indeed, no other aspect of human aptitude has been researched more widely. This research suggests that around 15% of career success can be attributed to intelligence, but the figure increases when jobs are complex. Another aspect of talent that has been examined is emotional intelligence – the ability to manage your own and others’ emotions. Around 9% of career success may be attributable to this trait, which is independent of learning ability. Needless to say, talent is often in the choices, and research shows that picking careers or jobs that align with your natural interests will significantly boost your career success. This is why self-awareness, which is encapsulated in most measures of emotional intelligence, is so critical. Importantly, talent is always job-specific, which is why expertise and experiencehave consistently emerged as predictors of performance and success. However, expertise and experience are heavily influenced by intelligence, effort, and luck (opportunities).
Effort: There is an extensive literature on motivation, ambition, and drive as determinants of individual differences in job performance, income, social mobility, and career success. In recent years, these attributes have been combined and rebranded as grit. Effort is interesting because it can be influenced by external situational factors – e.g., an inspiring boss, carrots and sticks, desperation, and constructive feedback – as well as being deeply dependent on internal personal factors, which can be traced all the way to childhood. Since the average correlation between measures of effort and measures of career success rarely exceed 0.30, we can conclude that no more than 9% of a person’s success can typically be attributed to their ambition, drive, or motivation. Things may be different when we look at extraordinary achievers: people who sacrifice their personal life, fun, sleep, merely to optimize for career success. I’m pretty sure Serena Williams, Angela Merkel, Jeff Bezos, and Miles Davis (not to mention Madonna or Maradona) are in this category – though they probably didn’t lack talent.
Luck: We finally get to luck, and if we define it as everything that isn’t talent or effort, and accept that the combined impact of talent and effort is at most 45% (ballpark), then we have to accept that luck accounts for at least half of the equation. Kahneman was onto something. This does not refute the notion that “luck favors the prepared man” (Napoleon Bonaparte), but it’s fair to say that many of the elements that constitute “preparedness” are hardly meritocratic: attractiveness, genetics, socioeconomic status, parental educational level, biological sex, and ethnicity, all augment or handicap people’s level of career success, independently of what they are willing and able to do. So, yes, it matters whether you experience headwinds or tailwinds, and even if your talent and effort may affect how you cope with the winds, you have zero (yes, zero) control over the winds. No growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-belief, or self-confidence will alter the direction or speed of the winds.
In short, an admittedly oversimplified overview of the scientific evidence suggests that luck comes first, followed by talent, then effort. In other words, the more you control something, the less it matters. Then again, there’s not much point in ruminating or stressing out about the stuff we cannot control.
“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” ~Dalai Lama
It’s probably happened to you. In all likelihood, it has happened multiple times in your life thus far.
You don’t understand why it happens. And when it does, it can throw you into the deepest valleys of despair.
Perhaps you cry out to a higher power to make things better. Maybe you just stare into the cosmos, wondering what the meaning of life is and why things get tough.
I’ve been there. Many times. For all sorts of reasons.
Breakups, career problems, dealing with a death, financial issues, there are a million things that can put you into this frame of mind.
You know what you want more than anything, but no matter what you do, the universe just doesn’t seem to give it to you. Why? Why can’t things just be easier, simpler? Why can’t things get better?
Why can’t we get what we want?
A few years ago I was going through an extremely difficult time in my life. My fiancé of four years had broken up with me. Over the phone.
No visit. No long talk about how we could maybe work it out. She just told me she couldn’t do it anymore.
And just like that, I was thrown into that valley.
I spent the next few months searching for answers. I read through different religious texts, self-help sites, and scientific books. I prayed, I meditated, and I even tried to visualize the thing that I wanted the most.
I just wanted my fiancé back.
My work suffered at my job, though I didn’t notice. It took an old friend, one of my bosses, calling me into his office and having an honest conversation for me to realize that I was basically coasting through the weeks.
In the evenings, I was plagued by dreams of my ex. In them, we were happy and together. Everything had worked out.
Of course, I always woke up in the middle of the night, sweating and crying. Yeah, I woke up crying.
I was raised to believe in a higher power. But during those nights of torture, I found myself pounding my pillow and begging him/her to make everything better.
Nothing ever got better, though.
Talks with friends yielded no good counsel. As a student of the psychological sciences, and a counselor myself, their cliché words only served to frustrate me.
“There’s a reason for everything.” “If it’s meant to be.” “Time heals all wounds.” The more I heard their fortune cookie advice, the angrier I became.
And the whole time, I continued to beg the higher power to fix everything.
One day at my job, I was talking to one of the teachers I worked with. She was a huge fan of Native American history and had an interesting perspective on my predicament.
She suggested that I go on a vision quest.
I’d done one of these when I was in graduate school as part of an assignment. We had studied the ancient technique the natives used when they were searching for answers, so I was pretty familiar with the process.
If you don’t know what a vision quest is, you go out to a place where all you can do is observe the world around you and focus intensely on the thoughts that come as a result.
This time, though, the stakes were much higher than on my previous quest.
I decided to do it on a weekend and woke up the following Saturday morning with one mission in mind: to find answers.
The former capital of the Cherokee nation was only twenty minutes from my house, now set aside as a state park. I figured what better place to do a vision quest than where the Native Americans used to live?
It was a chilly morning, and the forests surrounding the historical site were thick with fog as I began my walk.
I stopped at various points along the way to meditate and pray. There was one spot next to a gentle brook where I watched the birds and squirrels scurrying about their day, mirroring the many thoughts and feelings rushing around in my head.
While nature was peaceful around me, a storm still raged in my heart centering around a single question: Why can’t I have what I want?
I continued the walk, writing down every thought and emotion that came to my mind. Minutes turned into hours and, as I neared the fourth hour of my quest, I decided it was getting close to time for me to leave. Empty handed.
I neared the top of a ridge at the edge of the sacred land and looked up into the leafy canopy of the forest. Poplar, oak, and maple leaves hung silently above me.
“I just want to know why you won’t fix this for me,” I said out loud, bitterly.
Suddenly, my mind was whisked back to the school where I work to a point a few weeks before and a conversation I’d had with one of my students. I’d walked into the computer classroom to see what everyone was working on that day and he’d gotten my attention.
“Hey, can you fix my grade in this class so I can pass?”
The question caught me off guard and I laughed. “Yeah, I can do that,” I surprised him with my answer. As a school counselor, I have access to that kind of stuff.
His face became hopeful. “You can?”
I went on to explain to him that I could do that, but I wouldn’t.
He asked why.
I told him it was because if I fixed everything for him like that, he would never learn anything.
My brain zipped back to the moment, standing on the forest trail. The realization punched me in the face like Mike Tyson in his prime.
A smile crept onto my face. Then I began to laugh and looked back up into the treetops. A robust breeze rolled in, waving the high branches around dramatically.
I continued to smile as I spun around staring dizzily into the rustling leaves.
That was it. If someone or something always fixed everything for me all the time, I would never learn anything. More than that, I would never be able to do anything for myself in life. I would always be dependent on someone or something else to make things better for me.
I would never be able to learn another language, live in a foreign environment, try new foods or activities, or grow as a person in any way.
Sometimes in life things happen that can be difficult, and often they can be extremely painful. We must push through those moments where all seems lost. When we do, we can find a new us on the other side that is wiser and more beautiful than we ever imagined.
By working through these difficult changes in life, we grow into something new, better, stronger.
To paraphrase what the Rolling Stones said: You can’t always get what you want. But you get what you need.
I am experiencing some challenges these days, feel pressured and a bit of self-doubt and uncertainty. Therefore, I would let myself to do 21 days positive affirmation (by Louise Hay) to do a healing and encouraging to myself. Today is my first day. Let’s see the little changes every day.
Give your best to life. Life supports and creates me. I am safe.
My future is glorious.
Everything is great for me.
My body is great for me.
I am at peace of my age. For me, I feel as young as I truly feel.
The past is over. I let yesterday gone. NOW is the special moment for me, I stay in the now.
I release all judgement and criticism.
I am willing to let it go. I am not here to control others. I am here to heal myself.
I am free to create things that are meaningful to me.
I bless home with LOVE.
As I say yes to life, and life say yes to me!
I am not in good status these days.
my last day is coming; I got a bad cold while need work for night shift;
I got period while got a bad cold… headache, running nose, cannot fall asleep..
I have expectations every day…but life doesn’t give me what I want every day:( I feel so sad today.
BUT it’s LIFE.
“Sometimes our thoughts are backed by so much insecurity that they create lies we believe.” ~Unknown
After nearly a year of being single and after going through my fifth breakup, I found myself involved with someone new.
It was the typical guy-meets-girl story you read about all over the Internet. We met for dinner and drinks and there was an immediate attraction. We laughed and talked and overall had a great night. By the second date, he stayed the night at my house and didn’t leave for four days.
This time I felt I was more prepared. I had studied relationships. I had learned about communicating. I was sure I was going to get my needs met and everything would be perfect.
I thought I was changed and that meant everything would be different this time. Surprise! Life doesn’t work that way.
I’m not sure I noticed it at the time, but I was still feeling a little insecure and unsure and wasn’t ready to let go of my fears. I made sure to continually tell him what I wanted and needed in a relationship. Little by little, I was pushing my agenda on him.
Naturally, he started to back away. I don’t think he even knew why and I certainly didn’t know either. I only knew I was feeling out of control and was perpetually pissed at him for being a jerk.
Slowly, we stopped spending all weekend together. He wasn’t coming over after work as often. His texts were more sporadic. Then, one Friday went by with not a word. Then a Saturday and then Sunday went by. It had been three whole days with no text, no call, no plans, no nothing.
Who did this guy think I was? Didn’t I deserve some sort of contact? What was I to do? Certainly this behavior was not acceptable!
So I cried and blamed him and told myself I had chosen wrong again, and that I wouldn’t be put in a position of feeling “less than.” Then I texted him out of the blue with the words, “Don’t ever call me again.”
I thought this was the totally mature way to handle things and that I was only “protecting myself.” I was, right? Wrong.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had done. I felt awful. I knew what I had written wasn’t what I wanted to say or what I felt. I realized that yet again I was acting out of fear, and if I wanted to change my patterns, I had to change myself.
I wanted him to be wrong, but I realized he wasn’t and that he was just reacting to me.
I also realized that I was the only one who could change my world, so I did. I thought long and hard about what I wanted and read some more. I realized that my style of communication was still failing, and that if I wanted things to change with him, they had to change with me.
So after about two weeks I called him and apologized for the way I ended things. I told him I’d reacted out of fear and that I was confused and scared and didn’t know what else to do. I knew that in addition to apologizing I had to change my patterns of interacting with him.
This time, instead of making everything about me and my wants and needs and fears, I began to take an interest in him and his life. I completely put myself aside (for the moment) because I knew that if I wanted a different result, I had to try a different path.
First off, I went slowly. I let him contact me at his own pace. He had to feel comfortable with talking to me again and realize I wasn’t going to freak out or push some needy agenda on him.
I had to learn to calm myself, which is something I thought I had already done, but apparently I had more work to do.
Oftentimes we reach out to others in the expectation that if they respond correctly, we’ll be reassured of our worthiness. Don’t let someone else dictate how you feel about yourself. If someone calls or doesn’t call or texts or doesn’t text, you need to be okay with it and realize the world won’t end.
Have some patience (which is hard for many of us), and try and sit back and enjoy every moment of the conversations or time together you do have. Stop living in the past or the future. Be present and go slowly. Life is not a race to the end, but a journey with laughter and love and joy and pain all along the way, and you can’t escape any of it, so stop trying.
Secondly, I listened. I listened to what was going on in his life and asked questions. I took an interest in the struggles he was having and was sincerely concerned and understanding.
If you want to know someone and want them in your life, listen to them. They don’t need to know your entire story right off the bat, (It’s been four months and he doesn’t know mine).
People are generally egoistic, and showing your potential partner that you want to know about them, what moves them, what motivates them, and what type of person they are will go a long way.
I’m not saying you should listen with a goal in mind. Don’t think to yourself, “Aha, if I listen to him or her, he/she will want to be with me.” Listen because you care. Listen because the world doesn’t revolve around you and your needs all the time.
Human beings are amazing creatures, and every single one of us has different fears, needs, and desires. The more time you invest in understanding your potential or current partner, the more you will get in return.
Thirdly, I learned how to stop assuming and start asking. Never assume how someone feels. Never assume what they want or what they need.
Some days we would be in the middle of texting and he would suddenly *poof* disappear. I was left confused and irritated.
The next time it happened, instead of assuming he didn’t want to talk to me or he didn’t care (which is what I would normally do), I asked him about it and he told me why it happens. And of course it had nothing to do with me. Victory!
Instead of saying nothing, I said, “I’m trying to understand you, and sometimes when we’re in the middle of talking and you suddenly disappear. Why is that?”
I asked because I truly wanted to understand. I didn’t blame him. It took a lot of courage to ask, as I normally just make up answers in my head and put up walls, so I was really proud of myself for doing it.
Most of us tend to jump to conclusions about how others feel because we view the world through our tinted lenses. This is fairly normal, but it can lead to confusion, misunderstandings, and anger if you do it all the time. Try to step outside yourself and see how others may perceive you or perceive the world.
When you ask someone a question, come from a place of love and wanting to understand, not from a place of blame or frustration. Be straightforward and say, “I’m trying to understand you better. When xxxx happens I am often confused, and I’m wondering if you could explain it to me.”
When you want to share your feelings or communicate what is going on with you try not to say, “You make me feel x, y, z when you do x, y z.”
People don’t make you feel anything to you. Their actions may trigger certain feelings, based on how you interpret them, but it’s also possible you are already feeling depressed or anxious or lonely or scared, and only think the other person is making you feel that way.
We all choose what we believe and how we interpret the things other people do, and those beliefs and interpretations create our feelings. The other person can’t possibly know what’s going on in your head unless you explain to them that you have these insecurities and that it isn’t their fault, but you want them to know.
When you come from a place of insecurity, you will often project blame onto the other person when it’s possible that what they did or said had no negative connotation whatsoever.
Sometimes people are clueless, sometimes thoughtless, sometimes self-absorbed, but most of the time their intention isn’t to hurt your feelings. Try to remember this before you speak.
Love and intimacy are scary. There are days when I still struggle with whether he cares, and I suddenly go quiet and retreat into my world.
My natural reaction when I’m falling in love is to want to run, and run fast. I want to put up walls and let the other person try to climb over them, as I’m sure many of you do as well. I’m sure you also know this isn’t remotely healthy and is only a protective mechanism.
Communicating from love means letting down your walls, even if just a little, and accepting the possibility of being hurt.
One day I was talking to him about my blog and how it means a lot to me when people are thankful for what I write or appreciative of my stories. Because he was playing on his computer and didn’t seem to be listening, I felt unimportant.
I became quiet. My plan was to say nothing. I assumed he just didn’t care to listen. My old patterns were creeping back in. However, this time I realized that if I want to keep moving forward and keep changing, I had to share my feelings instead of running inside myself.
I know that most of my fears of not feeling important stem from my childhood and my issues, and it isn’t fair to push them on him. I told him, “Sometimes I don’t feel important to you.” Just saying it was a relief.
I could tell he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. He said, “Of course you’re important and I care about what you have to say.” I realized in that moment the fears I had were my own and weren’t rooted in any truth.
It can feel monumentally scary and overwhelming to share even little fears, but if you do it in a way that shows your vulnerability and if you are with someone who has any capacity to love, then you will be amazed at the results you get.
By doing all those things I mentioned above, I changed my relationship. When I gave to him he gave back. The more I put out the more I got in return. I stopped making the entire relationship about me. Everything has changed, and it’s all because I chose to change it.
Remember that in the end you have no control over anyone but yourself. If you want or need something, stop looking to the other person to give it to you and start looking to yourself.
You can change your life and your relationship patterns. It may not happen overnight and it may not be as fast as you want, but have some faith and keep moving forward. Love will happen.
Honestly, I’m quite panic about the results of my examination.
In my mind, I feel quite stressed and was also thinking about negative results.
How should I do!! Just want to make myself a bit calm and not so stress.
Or you will burn out.
By Blon Lee
“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” ~Eckhart Tolle
When I first started practicing Zen (or presence), I used to believe I could become completely thoughtless. Making my bed, no-thought. Washing my hands, no-thought. Walking around, no-thought. Imagine the spiritual experience!
But it wasn’t like what I thought it would be.
The reality is my mind was on full throttle all the time. No matter what I did, there would be a billion thoughts popping out from my head, preventing me from having even a moment of peace. Then I would yell at myself, “Okay, enough. Get out of your head now! Stop thinking!”
In a panic, I thought about all those concepts I’d learned. “Now which technique do I use?” I’d think to myself, “What would a master do? There must be something I can do to silence my mind…”
The harder I forced myself, the noisier my mind became. I tried so hard, but I just couldn’t do it. In fact, it just made things worse. My thoughts and inner dialogue would run even wilder. I was frustrated and angry with myself.
During my first few years of practicing Zen and meditation, I was never at peace. Not even close. But I didn’t give up.
As I learned more about spirituality, I finally found the answer. I was too hung up on killing my thoughts. I became obsessed with them, even though they were the very things I was trying to get rid of. As soon I realized that, I finally let go, and now I feel free.
Here is what I learned, and how you can do the same.
It’s human to have thoughts. It means you have a healthy and functioning brain. We don’t need to get rid our thoughts at all. Why?
Just like our eyes see, our ears hear, our nose smells, our tongue tastes, and our body feels, our mind thinks. If you want to get rid of a specific function, you will have to destroy the corresponding organ. The underlying message is simple: No one has a mind without thoughts, unless he or she is dead.
When I tried to stop my mind, I was actually doing the impossible. Just as I can’t make my eyes not see and my ears not hear, there is no way I can make my mind not think.
A quiet mind is not a mind with no thoughts. Rather, it is a decision you make to embrace every emotion and thought within you.
Here’s the irony: When you embrace all your thoughts without judgment, no matter how annoying they are, your mind will calm down.
So don’t resist your thoughts. Don’t beat yourself up for thinking too much. If you do, you are giving yourself unnecessary stress and anxiety. Thinking is the core function of your mind, and you are going to hear mental dialogue whether you like it or not.
If you try to fight it, you resist what is inevitable. The more you fight your thoughts, the more you amplify them. Being non-judgmental is the key to stillness. Be okay with whatever thoughts you have, and true inner peace will come naturally.
I love to hike. When I get to the foot of the mountain, I don’t really think ahead. I focus only on the individual steps that lead me to my destination. With each step I take, in each passing moment, I admire the scenery and I savor the smell of fresh air. It’s a great way to become present.
The reason I can do this is because I know where I want to go, how to get there, and the purpose of my hike beforehand. This way, I clear my mind of all analytical thinking—about the past and future—and I can get into the present more easily.
Whenever you analyze, you are always thinking into the past and future. This takes you away from the beauty of the present moment.
Of course, challenges and unexpected things happen. But as you deal with them with a defined purpose, your thinking stays within the present rather than thinking ahead, worrying, and giving yourself unwanted stress.
Separate analytical thinking from action. Plan beforehand. Know exactly what to do before you start. Have a clear purpose and defined steps you would take.
Do you meditate?
When you meditate, you need a focus. It could be your breath or a mantra. This restrains your mind from wandering. Like the Buddha said, your mind is a dancing monkey. It is always looking for ways to escape from the present. On the other hand, a focus is like an oak tree that grounds you in the present.
To stop the monkey from breaking away, you tie a rubber band between the two. Whenever the monkey goes too far, the band snaps him back to the trunk of the tree.
How do you do this in your daily life? Unlike meditation, many of our daily tasks are habitual. Things like using the bathroom, taking a shower, eating, and walking are very hard to focus on.
This is because your brain automates these tasks to save energy. This isn’t a bad thing, but now that your mind is freed up, it begins to babble non-sense. It starts wandering to the past and future.
Luckily, you can use these tricks to increase focus and stay present:
Mentally remind yourself of your present action.
Use self-talk to direct your focus back to the present moment. For example, when washing your hands, repeat in your head, “I am washing my hands. I am washing my hands. I am washing my hands.”
Focus on your senses.
Direct your attention back into your body and out of your head. For example, when taking a shower, observe how water trickles down the surface of your skin. Inhale the fragrance of the soap. Enjoy the warmth. Listen to the sounds of flowing water.
Do things differently.
Make things more challenging. A classic technique all Zen masters use is to do everything in slow motion. This may sound easy, but it’s not. You will have a hard time doing things the way you want to. As a result, you are forced to act consciously instead of acting on autopilot.
Let’s go back to the oak tree-monkey analogy.
At the beginning of your practice, your focus may be weak. Instead of an oak tree, it is more like a sprout; a monkey can easily uproot it.
But don’t give up. Plant another tree. Bring your awareness back to your focus whenever your mind wanders away from it.
Yes, that tree will probably be uprooted too. But each tree you plant will have its roots deeper and its trunk stronger than the time before. Likewise, your focus becomes stronger each time you return to the present moment.
In this sense, mental noise is actually a good thing. It is an opportunity for you to become aware and strengthen your presence.
More than likely, all this is hard for you right now. All those concepts, techniques, and teachings you learned are complicating things so much that they don’t help you anymore. Worse, they make you even more stressed.
If you really want a quiet mind, you have to throw all these concepts away, at least for the time being. Instead, start making everything in your life a practice. Learn not to judge yourself. Learn to be okay with whatever happens, and relax.
You may not be able to do this at first, but it will happen. And when it happens, you will feel a click in your brain. On the outside, you will still be you. But on the inside, you will be overflowing with tranquility.
This is not because you have silenced your mind. Not because you have banished all your negative thoughts. Not because you have mastered a lot of techniques.
It is because you are okay with whatever happens. You are okay with negative thoughts. You are okay with a noisy mind. You are okay with interruptions and distractions. And when you are okay with whatever happens, you don’t hang on to them. In other words, you learn to let things go.
Until then? Change the way you see your thoughts, and change the way you deal with them. All it takes is a little commitment and practice. This is your first step. One simple choice.
And soon, you will have the inner peace you have always dreamed of.
“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt
It’s natural to think that we’re always in the spotlight.
We think that people care about the way we dress, but they don’t.
We think that people notice our nervous habits, when in reality, they’re worried about whether people are noticing their own.
We tend to go through life as if our every move is being watched, judged, and evaluated on a moment-to-moment basis by the people around us. Here’s a reality check—you’re not that important.
I don’t mean that in a brash way. This shouldn’t make you feel small or inferior, it should liberate you. And if it doesn’t, I have a feeling that what I’m about to talk about will.
As you guys know, a funeral procession is broken up into two parts: the funeral and the burial.
During the funeral, spiritual leaders read various snippets from religious texts about the meaning of death, and close family members are allowed to get up and say a few words about the deceased.
The burial takes place directly after the funeral, although some religions operate on a different procedure. During the burial, the body is transported outside, and the deceased is put to rest in the grave site.
Now, you’re probably wondering why I’m spending so much time talking about funeral procedures. I’d probably be asking myself the same question reading this article, so here’s the bottom line.
The burial takes place outside on grass.
Do you want to know the number one factor that determines how many people attend the burial after the funeral procession is over?
The weather.
If it happens to be raining outside, 50 percent of people who attended the funeral will decide not to attend the burial and head home.
That doesn’t mean those people don’t care, just that they’re first and foremost focused on themselves and their own lives and needs, as most of us are. Which means they’re focused on what they’re doing than what you’re doing.
So why would you worry about what others think of your life choices? Why would you care about what other people say about you if you haven’t done anything to harm them?
Why would you live life being bogged down by the opinions of others if half of the people attending your funeral will skip the burial because of bad weather?
Coming across this information struck me like a lightning bolt. And no, I’m not going to sit here and lie to you by saying that reading this factoid about funerals led to some life-changing epiphany and now everything is sunshine and rainbows.
What I will say is that it had an impact on my mindset. It forced me to really look at my day-to-day life and analyze where my actions were being driven by the opinions of others.
Realizing just how little people cared about the decisions I made was one of many factors that influenced me to start shutting down the inner critic—that voice that tells you that everything you do is being judged by others.
For most of my life, I let the opinions of other people stop me from living a rich, fulfilling life.
In social situations, it was more comfortable for me to agree with what was said than express my own beliefs.
It was more comfortable for me to sit back and watch instead of calling one of my friends out for something that he shouldn’t be doing.
It was more comfortable for me to avoid the situations I was afraid of instead of diving into them head-first and stretching my limits. The fear of failing publicly in front of other people was absolutely terrifying to me.
One particular instance from my high school years illustrates this perfectly.
It was my freshman year, and our first dance of the year had arrived. I showed up in all-white, trying to keep consistent with the “white-out” theme that had been planned for the dance.
As the dance started and music started playing, students began rushing to the middle of the gymnasium and dancing their hearts out.
That’s when the fear hit me. My insides felt like they were twisting around each other.
My breathing matched my heartbeat. It wasn’t calm and collected, it was frantic.
My mind went into full “stop him from taking action” mode by conjuring up a bunch of scenarios in which I look like a total idiot on the dance floor.
For the rest of the night, I was glued to that wall. Only thirty feet away, there was a bunch of care-free teenagers having the time of their lives.
I went to the bathroom about seven or eight times just to make the time go faster. I talked to other people who weren’t really dancing, and we were all playing it off like we were too cool to express ourselves in public.
The truth is that we were all just terrified of being ourselves in front of other people.
That moment set the trajectory for the rest of my high school experience. I wish I could go back in time to my fifteen-year-old self and tell him to wake up. I wish I could tell that shy, insecure person that rejection, public failure, and the opinions of other people don’t matter.
I wish I could tell him that at the end of someone’s life, the biggest factor in determining whether or not people attend their burial comes down to whether or not the sky cries more than the congregation does.
But I can’t do that. I can only look forward to what’s in store for me now that I’ve finally realized how unimportant my actions are. It’s not a shameful thing to admit that you’re unimportant, it’s liberating. It gives you the freedom to take risks and challenge yourself.
Life becomes a lot more fun when you realize that everyone around you is so absorbed with their own thoughts and feelings that they couldn’t care less what you do.
So next time you see someone that you want to talk to, don’t let the fear of rejection stop you, go introduce yourself. I promise you that if you embarrass yourself and the conversation goes nowhere, the person won’t even remember your name tomorrow.
The next time you feel the urge to call a friend that you haven’t spoken to in a while, but feel like it might come across as “weird,” I promise you there’s a 99 percent chance that the person will be extremely grateful for the call.
And if the person isn’t grateful and gives you the cold shoulder? Well, let’s just say that you’re not the one with the problem if you’re trying to be friendly and warm and are flat out dismissed.
I encourage you to write down the things in your life that you’re scared to do because you’re afraid of what other people will think. And then each day, cross one of those things off your list.
Constantly remind yourself that everyone is busy thinking about one thing—themselves.
Going through life with this mindset will make you much more likely to face down the demons that are stopping you from living the life you want.
“If today gets difficult, remember the smell of coffee, the way sunlight bounces off a window, the sound of your favorite person’s laugh, the feeling when a song you love comes on, the color of the sky at dusk, and that we are here to take care of each other.” ~Nanea Hoffman
I am sure everyone is experiencing uneasy 2020. For me, it’s the same! There could always changes every now and then. Working, life, and relationship changed a lot.
I was waiting for exam since last Dec, however, it was cancelled in May; and it was cancelled again in Sep ><. I don’t know if it will cancel again in next May. However, I need keep preparation. I feel emotional, and pressured all the time. The date of exam will also influence my working plan.
On the other hand, due to unstoppable breakout on and on, the conversation or meet-up with others is total different. The relationship may go smoothly if there would be no shutdown. However, it’s totally different now. However, the positive side is that self-accompanying matters more. Maybe I know more about how to make myself happy, instead of leaning on others.
Honestly, I hate changes!! It makes me feel so uncertain. However, what can I do? keep upset about uncertainty, or just accept the sudden changes and make plans accordingly? It’s always easier said than done. Live in the present is not easy. Detachment to the result is not easy. We always keep bothering by the imagine of past and future, and feel worried.
BUT yesterday, I sudden understand a point when I read the Atomic Habits. Release the control to the result doesn’t mean you don’t wanna get it. Instead, you know how to get there, and therefore, you will focus more on every day’s little things.
Everyone wish to get good results. However, only focusing on getting there only brings more pressure and worries. Sometimes, it’s better to forget your goal, and dip into routines. Finally, this will bring the exciting results that you never expected.
So just forget your goals, and start moving on.
Live in today!
Your peace garden 